Measurement of Galaxy Clustering at z~7.2 and the Evolution of Galaxy Bias from 3.8<z<8 in the XDF, GOODS-S AND GOODS-N

Lyman-Break Galaxy (LBG) samples observed during reionization ($zgtrsim6$) with Hubble Space Telescopes Wide Field Camera 3 are reaching sizes sufficient to characterize their clustering properties. Using a combined catalog from the Hubble eXtreme Deep Field and CANDELS surveys, containing $N=743$ LBG candidates at z>6.5 at a mean redshift of $z=7.2$, we detect a clear clustering signal in the angular correlation function (ACF) at $sim4sigma$, corresponding to a real-space correlation length $r_{0}=6.7^{+0.9}_{-1.0}h^{-1}$cMpc. The derived galaxy bias $b=8.6^{+0.9}_{-1.0}$ is that of dark-matter halos of $M=10^{11.1^{+0.2}_{-0.3}}$M$_{odot}$ at $z=7.2$, and highlights that galaxies below the current detection limit ($M_{AB}sim-17.7$) are expected in lower-mass halos ($Msim10^{8}-10^{10.5}$M$_{odot}$). We compute the ACF of LBGs at $zsim3.8-zsim5.9$ in the same surveys. A trend of increasing bias is found from $z=3.8$ ($bsim3.0$) to $z=7.2$ ($bsim8.6$), broadly consistent with galaxies at fixed luminosity being hosted in dark-matter halos of similar mass at $4<z<6$, followed by a slight rise in halo masses at $zsim7$ ($sim2sigma$ confidence). Separating the data at the median luminosity of the $z=7.2$ sample ($M_{UV}=-19.4$) shows higher clustering at $z=5.9$ for bright galaxies ($r_{0}=5.5^{+1.4}_{-1.5}h^{-1}$cMpc, $b=6.2^{+1.2}_{-1.5}$) compared to faint galaxies ($r_{0}=1.9^{+1.1}_{-1.0}h^{-1}$cMpc, $b=2.7pm1.2$) implying a constant mass-to-light ratio $frac{dlogM}{dlogL}sim1.2^{+1.8}_{-0.8}$. A similar trend is present in the $z=7.2$ sample with larger uncertainty. Finally, our bias measurements allow us to investigate the fraction of dark-matter halos hosting UV-bright galaxies (the duty-cycle, $epsilon_{DC}$). At $z=7.2$ values near unity are preferred, which may be explained by the shortened halo assembly time at high-redshift.